{"id":27318,"date":"2025-05-07T15:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27318"},"modified":"2025-05-07T15:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T15:24:09","slug":"genetic-study-retraces-covids-origins-in-bats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27318","title":{"rendered":"Genetic Study Retraces Covid\u2019s Origins in Bats"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

As China and the United States trade charges of a lab leak, researchers contend in a new paper that the Covid pandemic got its start, like a previous one, in the wildlife trade.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

In the early 2000s, a coronavirus infecting bats jumped into raccoon dogs and other wild mammals in southwestern China. Some of those animals were sold in markets, where the coronavirus jumped again, into humans. The result was the SARS pandemic, which spread to 33 countries and claimed 774 lives. A few months into it, scientists discovered the coronavirus in mammals known as palm civets sold in a market at the center of the outbreak.<\/p>\n

In a<\/a> study published on Wednesday<\/a>, a team of researchers compared the evolutionary story of SARS with that of Covid 17 years later. The researchers analyzed the genomes of the two coronaviruses that caused the pandemics, along with 248 related coronaviruses in bats and other mammals.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Pekar, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Edinburgh and an author of the new study, said that the histories of the two coronaviruses followed parallel paths. \u201cIn my mind, they are extraordinarily similar,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In both cases, Dr. Pekar and his colleagues argue, a coronavirus jumped from bats to wild mammals in southwestern China. In a short period of time, wildlife traders took the infected animals hundreds of miles to city markets, and the virus wreaked havoc in humans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n

\u201cWhen you sell wildlife in the heart of cities, you\u2019re going to have a pandemic every so often,\u201d said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and an author of the new study.<\/p>\n

The study lands at a fraught political moment. Last month the White House created a web page<\/a> called \u201cLab Leak: The True Origin of Covid 19,\u201d asserting that the pandemic had been caused not by a market spillover but by an accident in a lab in Wuhan, China.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n

Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As China and the United States trade charges of a lab leak, researchers contend in a new paper that the Covid pandemic got its start, like a previous one, in the wildlife trade.In the early 2000s, a coronavirus infecting bats jumped into raccoon dogs and other wild mammals in southwestern China. Some of those animals were sold in markets, where the coronavirus jumped again, into humans. The result was the SARS pandemic, which spread to 33 countries and claimed 774 lives. A few months into it, scientists discovered the coronavirus in mammals known as palm civets sold in a market at the center of the outbreak.In a study published on Wednesday, a team of researchers compared the evolutionary story of SARS with that of Covid 17 years later. The researchers analyzed the genomes of the two coronaviruses that caused the pandemics, along with 248 related coronaviruses in bats and other mammals.Jonathan Pekar, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Edinburgh and an author of the new study, said that the histories of the two coronaviruses followed parallel paths. \u201cIn my mind, they are extraordinarily similar,\u201d he said.In both cases, Dr. Pekar and his colleagues argue, a coronavirus jumped from bats to wild mammals in southwestern China. In a short period of time, wildlife traders took the infected animals hundreds of miles to city markets, and the virus wreaked havoc in humans.\u201cWhen you sell wildlife in the heart of cities, you\u2019re going to have a pandemic every so often,\u201d said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and an author of the new study.The study lands at a fraught political moment. Last month the White House created a web page called \u201cLab Leak: The True Origin of Covid 19,\u201d asserting that the pandemic had been caused not by a market spillover but by an accident in a lab in Wuhan, China.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27320,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27321,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27318\/revisions\/27321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}